It’s Sunday and I’m about to go to bed as I’m up for work early in the morning; but before I head off to the land of nod I’m going to show you a video that will help you sleep peacefully tonight, complete with a satisfied smile.

What’s scarier than hordes of extremely fast zombies running out of the darkness towards you? What’s scarier than a Witch than can incapacitate you with one swipe? What could be more terrifying than hearing a tank bounding around the corner behind you? Well, what? Hearing “La-La!” as you walk around a dark city, that’s what.

L4DMods (the credit goes to Flameknight7) have put together a mod for Left 4 Dead that replaces the infected in the game with characters from the children’s TV series, Teletubbies. Yes, you can finally shoot Tinky Winky in the face before taking a look at just what’s in that handbag of his, and why the hell he has one in the first place anyway.

My mum was a childminder, so Teletubbies was on in the house all the time as I was growing up. Having to sit through years of them saying the same thing over and over again, plus a sun with a baby’s face, I can safely say that I’m going to relish the opportunity to blow Po’s head off. Unfortunately that freaky bear that sticks its tongue out isn’t there, which is disappointing because I’ve always wanted to put a few slugs into it. Noo-Noo also doesn’t make an appearance, which is a big oversight because he could have replaced The Boomer and unleashed custard instead of vomit.

You can download the mod for yourself here, finally accomplishing what most of us have always wanted to do (unfortunately you can’t put Dipsy’s head on a stick and parade it around town manically laughing). Now if only we could gun down The Tweenies…

It looks like the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott movement I wrote about back in June has been dealt a major blow as two of the founders recently published a post that raised more than just a few eyebrows. In an attempt to show the boycott group that Left 4 Dead 2 maintains the same quality that made the first game such a joy to play Valve flew the two group members out to their offices in Washington, which at least gives them a chance to say they’ve played the game before they continue to ‘boycott’ it.

So, what was their verdict?

“As for L4D2, things seemed balanced and ‘tight’ and did not feel like a rushed job. While we were visiting their offices we personally witnessed what can only be called a small army of artists, coders, mappers hard at work, which explains the rapid transformations in artwork that we’ve all seen.

What we can say with confidence is that the quality of gameplay in Left 4 Dead 2 is not in question; and it will only get better (from what we understand, almost daily testing of game builds by most of the staff at Valve).” - Source

266 comments later (at the time of writing) and they had been predictably labeled as ‘sell-outs’ by the majority of the group, even after the two guys were adamant that Valve isn’t dropping support for the first game. I suppose it’s hard to trust the word of two guys who’d just had an all-expenses paid trip across the US, even if they did help create the group. However, I had already made up my mind long before this new development.

So, what do you think? Sell-outs? Simply appreciating a good game? Don’t care? I think that I regret the comments I made in my previous post on this issue. After reading updated previews and seeing new videos since that post I believe that Left 4 Dead 2 will be worth it if you enjoyed the first game, and I am now genuinely looking forward to it. If Valve continues to support the first game then you’ve got two great games in your hands, and what could really be wrong with that apart from finding the time to play them both? I also need to note that I never agreed with a ‘boycott’ in the first place; I was simply a little annoyed because I thought that Valve would only be releasing a tiny bit of content for the first game, but from seeing more of the sequel I’m not sure that I’m even bothered about playing the first game anymore (to be fair I have enjoyed the content we did get). I probably won’t buy the game full price, but that’s because I have more than enough games to keep me occupied at the moment and it’s always good to pick up a bargain somewhere down the line.

I suppose the most important question here is “What the hell is that on Gabe’s shirt???”.

Related posts:

• Valve Responds to Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott

We love a good deal here at ButtonSmasher (we even have a ‘Bargain Bin’ series dedicated to cheap games) so imagine my jaw dropping to the floor and doing a little dance when I discovered that Steam currently has one of the best gaming deals I’ve ever seen.

2k Games is offering the “2K Huge Game Pack” right now on Steam. The pack includes games like Bioshock, five Civilization games, five X-Com games and nine others. The best part? It’s only £35.99!

Here’s the full list of the games in the pack:

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV
Sid Meier’s Civilization III Complete
Sid Meier’s Pirates!
Shattered Union
Prey
CivCity: Rome
Civilization IV: Warlords
Sid Meier’s Railroads!
Railroad Tycoon 3
Railroad Tycoon II Platinum
X-COM: Terror From the Deep
X-COM: Apocalypse
BioShock
X-COM: Interceptor
X-COM: UFO Defense
X-COM: Enforcer
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
Freedom Force
Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich
Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization

If you bought all those games individually it would empty your pockets of £141.80, which is a massive saving of £105.81. You can’t really go wrong with this deal, unless you have most or all of the games already.

The pack normally costs £39.99, but a 10% discount is in effect until July 7. This means the pack is now £35.99, so if you want to save £4 get it before Tuesday.

You can purchase the pack here. Alternatively you can just load the Steam program on your desktop and buy it through there.

Earlier this week over 15,000 fans formed a Steam community group with the aim to boycott the upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 launch. Left 4 Dead 2 was a surprise announcement at E3 – especially for Valve, a company that tends to take a long time to release a sequel – annoying many fans as they felt that Valve had promised to offer continued support and new content for Left 4 Dead. By releasing a sequel only a year after the first game gamers were starting to feel a bit short changed, as Left 4 Dead doesn’t have a great deal of content and the idea was that more would be added (only the Survival Pack has been released so far). Valve has now responded to these protests.

Speaking to Kotaku Valve founder Gabe Newell defended plans for the sequel, saying that its release would not change plans for the continued support of the first game

“Doing a sequel in one year is new for Valve. But providing ongoing support for our titles after the initial launch isn’t - it has been part of our philosophy since Half-Life was released ten and half years ago,” said Newell.

“We see no reason to change that and will continue to support the over three million customers in the L4D community. Some in the community are concerned that the announcement of L4D2 implied a change in our plans for L4D1. We aren’t changing our plans for L4D1.”

“In addition to the recently released Survival Pack, we are releasing authoring tools for Mod makers, community matchmaking, 4×4 matchmaking, and more new content during the coming months for L4D1,” Newell claimed. “We also agree with our customers that there needs to be an interoperability plan for players of L4D1 and L4D2, as multiplayer games are driven by the cohesiveness of their community.”

While it’s refreshing to hear that Valve will still be supporting Left 4 Dead I still don’t understand why Valve couldn’t have just released Left 4 Dead 2 as an expansion pack instead of a fully fledged game. It’s not looking much different from the first game anyway, so it could have just been a new campaign instead. I understand that Valve need to make money but that can easily be done by charging for new content, just like the Burnout Paradise developers do.
Gabe Newell can justify it all he wants, but I’m still not sold. What’s the point in updating two products that are incredibly similar? I’m willing to bet that Valve stop creating new content for Left 4 Dead a few months after the sequel is released.

If you’re still not convinced that buying Left 4 Dead is worth any of your hard earned cash then Valve is setting out to try and change that mind of yours. Tomorrow Valve will remove the pay barrier on the PC version of the game, letting you access the game for free on Steam. If you’re thinking that’s the best deal you’ve heard in ages then be aware that the game will only be available for free for 24 hours, after which it will revert to its original price until pay for it.

If you’ve always been nervous about getting Left 4 Dead due to it not being the longest game in the world you’ll be happy to know that the new Survival Pack is also thrown into the deal. 24 hours should be more than enough to play through both, but Left 4 Dead should not be judged on how much content it has but rather how much replay-ability it offers. Personally I think it will keep anyone happy for a long while, as the AI ‘director’ makes every game you play unique. Secondly, Left 4 Dead is primarily a multiplayer game and people still play the same maps over and over again on Call of Duty 4, so why can’t you do the same with Left 4 Dead?

There’s no harm in giving it a shot, and if you don’t like it then you’ll be safe in the knowledge that you never spent a penny to play it.

Mods provide an excellent way of squeezing more life out of your PC games, and there’s even a few that become so popular that they eventually get picked up by a publisher and become a whole new game. One of the most modifiable engines out there right now is the Source Engine - which is the engine that games such as Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 run on - and the creators of the engine, Valve, have always been extremely appreciative of the work the mod community does (such as hiring the people who make the mods). This appreciation has become evermore apparent as Valve has released five of the most popular Source mods for download on their digital distribution platform Steam.

The five mods you can now automatically install on Steam (you have to own a Source game, of course) are Age of Chivalry, D.I.P.R.I.P., Insurgency (above), Synergy and Zombie Panic. Each mod deserves a try (Insurgency is excellent) and, hey, they’re free so why not? Obviously you’ve always been able to download and install these mods but now the process is far easier. Each mod will automatically update like the rest of your games on the ‘My Games’ list, plus they’ll also have access to Steamworks which provides stat tracking amongst other things.

You can expect more mods to come but, for now, log on to Steam to try the first five out.

Since it’s an extremely lazy Sunday (and a very rainy one) here I figured I should post something a little different from the norm. The above picture is a papercraft of Dog, Alyx Vance’s lovable robot pet from Half-Life 2. It was created by chamoo232 over on 4chan (yes, amazingly enough 4chan does sometimes produce some decent stuff) and took around 50 hours to complete. It’s not actually as big as this photo suggests and that seems to be some sort of cupboard behind it, but never the less it’s still pretty damn cool and has amazing attention to detail.

I wish I was creative enough to come up with something like this. Then again I already do enough time wasting so maybe it’s for the best. I think the rest of today will be spent catching up on a few games, since although I write a video game blog I’ve been pretty lacking on actually playing them lately.

Papercraft Half Life D0g is Amazle - Kotaku

While we have another month to go until Halloween I figured that I’d get in there early (when you least expect it…muahahaha!) and take a look at four upcoming horror games. Although I like horror games I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to playing them as I slowly slog my way through them crapping myself before turning every corner. I have bad memories of stupidly playing Doom 3 in the dark, although I wasn’t as bad as this guy. Anyway, here’s a quick look at what you’ll be needing new underwear for in the coming months.

Left 4 Dead

Release date: November 21 (UK)

The people at Valve always put out amazing games (Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 anyone?) and Left 4 Dead seems like it’s shaping up to be no exception to this rule. The premise see’s you and three other players stuck in a city overrun by zombies and other strange monsters such as the obese ‘Boomer’ who, when it explodes, can cause massive damage to anyone in the immediate area. The objective is to escape, but you have to work as a team to do this and anyone who departs from this will find themselves quickly overrun by the games intelligent ‘director’ AI.

I’m really excited by this one, even if the fast zombies may seem horribly overwhelming at first. I’m not sure what version to get as my PC is not exactly stellar these days but, at the same time, I love the mod scene and one will inevitably grow up around this game. Check out this link for some footage from the Xbox360 version.

Resident Evil 5

Release date: March 13 2009 (UK)

If you haven’t heard of this one then your cave must go pretty deep, especially with all the controversy surrounding it. Fans of the series will recognise the return of Chris Redfield, this time thrown into infected Africa. The game will play similar to the control system used in Resident Evil 4 and, if that game is anything to go by, it will be just as perfect.

Resident Evil 4 showed us that you don’t need the usual shambling zombie to be scared stiff as the thinking one can be far more terrifying. I remember the beginning of the 4th installment when the villages break into the house you’re in and chase you upstairs. Getting trapped in an upstairs room with hordes of people chasing you is pretty scary, until you find the window - and then you realise that they’re climbing up on ladders. That’s not forgetting the chainsaw guy (who makes his return in this installment, along with a particularly intimidating guy with an axe) and the boat on the lake scene that may put you off water for life.

Thankfully you can also experience the terror with a friend as the game supports an online co-op mode.

Dead Space.

Release date: October 24 (UK)

It’s being called Bioshock in space but will it be anywhere near as good? Dead Space is EA’s attempt at creating a new horror IP and they’re doing a good job building up all the fiction around it, but that’s all well and good until the game turns out absolutely pants. Luckily it seems to be shaping up pretty well, and is also looking pretty terrifying!

The story takes place on the giant mining space ship the Ishimura, but the crew who made the distress call seem to have turned into horrific nightmares. Since the ship is stricken and no longer under control you’ll encounter parts of the ship devoid of gravity, which you have to navigate using your magnetic boots while putting up with mind bending ceiling-is-now-the-floor type puzzles like those seen in Prey.  Oh, and there’s also that small matter of the incredible amounts of gore.

If EA can pull this off then we may just have an excellent new horror series on our hands.

Silent Hill: Homecoming

Release date: November 20 (UK)

Like Resident Evil the Silent Hill franchise is still going strong and, as always, will probably turn out to be far more terrifying than the Resident Evil franchise (although the giant spiders still freak me out). Since the original the Silent Hill games have got progressively weirder and weirder and, quite frankly, I’ve lost all hope of understanding just what the hell is going on. I think the above picture pretty much just sums up my reaction to each new Silent Hill game, as I’m sure you’re all with me in thinking ‘what the hell is that??!?’.

Another person goes to Silent Hill in search of someone…yawn. Real-time wounds will show up on Alex, the protagonist, and the strange creatures that populate this town from hell, which I guess sounds pretty cool. This is combined with completely new enemy AI and physics that allow more realistic interaction with the environment, so bumping against an object can alert terrifying creatures to your position.

However, Team Silent (the developers behind most of the franchise) aren’t developing this installment so I’m a bit sceptical about how the new developers, The Collective, will be able to handle the constantly confusing storyline.